The Underworld Semele

Semele was the only mortal to parent a God,a  Thebian princess, she once slaughtered a bull and was washing herself in the River Asopus to rid the blood that had stained her skin. Disguised as an eagle, Zeus spied her and fell in love with her. 

This shoot was a huge adventure, we all got in a car and Sue drove us all the way to Belgium where we stayed in a country house in the middle of nowhere, before the crack of dawn we made our way to the beautiful Chateau Noisey, a castle in the depths of the Belgium countryside. We hauled dresses up a really steep slope to get to the fairytale castle and the whole time there was fear that we would get caught as we had heard stories of a gun welding wonder who had recently caught people and had even shot at them.
Finally inside the building we began to create makeup and hair on Amanda, it was then we heard other people an we were scared the shoot was over, but it turned out to be other explorers not a crazy gunman. 

Soon we were taking photos and I felt relieved that we had captured something special after all the effort of getting there. I had also storyboarded a couple of shots in Theatre Varia, but unfortunately when we arrived and I went to check it out a man keep to me and started shouting at me and asking what I was doing, he followed me right back to the car and made sure we left. So as a last option I had another location lined up Chapel La Chappelle, I created my favourite shot of ‘Semele’ dressed in a huge red gown, with feathered body and horns like a bull, I had brought some red fabric to be the river of blood and it spilled out glorious all over the chapels shrine, it looked amazing. Tired we made our way back to the UK, completely happy with the shots we had created.

Photographer: Rebecca Bathory

Stylist: Sue Fyfe – Williams


Model: Amanda Piery


Makeup & Hair: Dominic Paul


Dresses: Mishi May


Mask: UK Milliners Guild


Headdresses: Creations by Liv Free


Retouching: Catherine Day


Retouching: Dave Kai Piper